


Home Again

by gratednutmeg



Category: Lost
Genre: Angst, Gen, JOSSED TO HELL, sawyer/jack friendship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-01-30
Updated: 2007-01-30
Packaged: 2018-10-15 07:37:29
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,092
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10552558
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gratednutmeg/pseuds/gratednutmeg
Summary: Importing some old fic from livejournal. Was written after the season 3 episode "I Do" (Aka, Jack does Spinal Surgery on Ben) for Lost Riffs, Day One, prompt 2: water, hands, music, green. Lyrics from Patsy Cline.





	

***  
_Here_  
For all the Others' lies, Ben was as good as his word. He got Jack the hell off the island, and within a week of the surgery—

_Damnit, Kate, RUN!_

—Jack was huddled on an honest-to-god American ship, military even, and all but begging them to go back. He was terrified, but kept it together as best he could, telling the people in charge enough to scare them into action — Polar Bears, Others, kidnappings, disease, and a few, so few, survivors, who didn't have a doctor, who needed to be home just as badly as he did. The story, by some miracle, didn't leak to the media, and though Jack didn't think he was entirely believed, he was rational and focused if not calm, and kept certain things back, and they believed enough to launch a full search and rescue mission.

No amount of pleading would let him stay with the search crews, though, and he was sent back to LA. Marc and his mother were the only ones told that he was alive — still trying desperately to keep the press from finding out — and Jack would have preferred no one to know. His condo in LA, the one he'd never really settled into after Sarah had left and the house had been sold, was gone, of course, and he moved into another that was just as sterile.

Just as cold.

*

_There_  
Improbable as it was, they made it back. Without Jack. And it was that damn ice queen Juliet who came to the beach camp, seeking asylum and bearing news that Jack was gone. Freckles was convinced that he was going to bring back rescue any day now.

She waited on the beach every day, staring into the horizon. Sometimes sinking, mostly just sitting.

Sawyer watched her watch the horizon.

He knew Jack wasn't coming back.

Not that Doc Hero wouldn't try.

_Telling Kate to close her eyes, just to spite them. And:_

_'You there? Pick it up. Pick it up, Danny. Pick it up, dammit!'_

_A rush of relief or disappointment, he wasn't sure which. But only doc could make someone sound so goddamn stressed out. Sawyer wasn't going to die today, goddamn doc sticking his nose in again, had to be. When he heard Jack's voice, it was only confirming what he already knew._

If Sawyer expected Kate to take up residence at his tent, or invite him to stay, he was wrong. And, if he admitted it to himself, a little disappointed. He knew there things from the cages they'd never know about each other — whatever happened to her when they put her in that pretty dress and then brought her in, and she'd never, ever know the full story about the goddamn heart monitor, the scalpel incision on his chest — but it would have been a little nice to have someone to know a little of what that hell hole was like.

Or maybe he just wanted someone else for people to ask about what the fuck happened, where the fuck was the doctor, and what the fuck were they supposed to do about it, which Sawyer knew were the hearts of the sometimes more politely phrased questions.

Sawyer didn't like Locke as leader, and wasn't alone in that, and he didn't like the way people kept asking him questions. But 'fuck off', sarcasm, and sometimes out-and-out lies were more than they got from Kate, so they kept asking.

*

_Here_  
Jack assumed it was his mother that told Sarah.

Marc sure as fuck wouldn't have.

He opened the door for her and she cried and held onto him and he awkwardly patted her back. He counted to five, then gently disengaged. He made them coffee, which he couldn't drink since he was back, it twisted his stomach badly, and tried to smile for her. She looked good. And there was an engagement diamond on her hand now. All she could talk about was how much she missed him, how she never stopped caring.

That she named her son Jack.

Jack didn't say anything for a long time.

"Why." The combination of fear and disbelief and a question that he knew the answer to, but still had to ask, for that nagging seed of doubt.

She looked down and away. "He's not..." Yours, he's not yours. "But I just thought..."

Jack counted the minutes until she left, and thanked a god he didn't believe in when the phone rang and he had to, gently, sort of, kick Sarah out. He wondered if she would come back. He hoped not.

The phone was his mother, who told him she needed to speak to him. Told him about a phone call she'd received shortly after the crash, about one of Christian's more lingering affairs. That he'd tried to see her in Australia... that the... child of that affair — Jack knew she wouldn't say bastard, but he could hear it — had been on the plane. Jack didn't sink to the floor, he just leaned forward, bracing one hand on the kitchen counter.

"Like mother like daughter," Margo supposed, her voice sounding increasingly strained. She'd taken up Christian's habit, and Jack could hear a thousand echoes of rocks against crystal. "Pregnant," Margo continued, and... a near-hysterical whisper held together by too-thin threads of polite society, "unmarried."

"What is her name, mom." Jack was holding himself up now, and nearly yelling. "Her name." And he was yelling now.

A funny noise, like a sob or a swallow or maybe it was just a laugh. "Claire Littleton."

Jack hung up the phone and slid down to the tile, hugging his knees to his chest and not trying to stop the tears.

It didn't take long after that for Marc to come, Sarah must've called. Marc was there a lot, actually, usually to either get Jack drunk, or take care of him when he got too drunk. He was just off work, and he told Jack that his wife — Marc still couldn't tell her about Jack — joked Marc was having an affair.

Jack looked up, eyes huge and brown and so lost, then laughed a little, scrubbed his face off, and laughed a little more.

"I beat them at cards." Marc looked startled, Jack had talked of anything but the island when he was here. "It was to get the medicine, but Sawyer — he's not really a lumberjack, but he had the medicine and he'd read to—" Aaron. Jack's nephew. Jack'snephewAaronJack'ssisterClaire. "The Others took Claire, and Rosseau took Aaron but they both came back and then they took Jack and he didn't."

Things spilled out, stories and memories, all out of order and not really making sense, and Marc just listened, let Jack get it out, literally talk himself to sleep, trying so hard to keep his eyes open and say one more thing, like an overtired child. Marc sighed and got a pillow and blanket off the couch and made his friend as comfortable as he could, then let himself out.

For the first time since he was rescued, Jack dreamed of the island. Jungle vines, strangling green, pulling him deeper and deeper in, until he couldn't see the beach, couldn't see the ocean, couldn't see his friends and antagonists. Couldn't see anything. The power must be shorting out in the hatch, dark, so dark, but the alarm was beeping, had to find it and put in the numbers.

Jack woke up to the phone ringing.

Still no sign of the island.

*

_There_  
No one went into the jungle alone any more, except Sawyer. If they captured him again, well, then, that was just too bad. But he just wanted some peace, not that he'd ever had that in generous supply. The lagoon he and Kate had found, so soon after the crash, was the perfect place. Sawyer stripped down — he skinny-dipped on the beach, no reason to be modest when he was alone, then sighed. Goddamn scars all over his fuckin' body. Island living. And why was he always the one getting shot and cut. Wasn't fair.

And all but one had the absent Jack's hands behind them, stitching him up or cleaning it up or holding it closed or forcing antibiotics down his throat.

Sawyer tried not to think about that when he waded out, submerged. Tried not to think about the fact that the ice queen of camp creepy was lying, that Jack was probably dead.

That even if he wasn't, no way in hell could he find his way back.

That he was probably gonna kill himself trying. That'd be a Jack thing to do.

He wondered if Jack knew about what had happened between him and Kate the night before the rescue. The ice princess had implied so, and that would just fit awfully nice with Jack's heroics. Self-sacrificing asshole.

Sawyer was no fool, he knew that if it had been Jack in there instead of him, same thing would have happened. They were lonely, they were scared. They had a connection. All of them.

He surfaced and sucked down air, then dove deep again. Didn't matter anyway.

*

_Here_  
They were trying to be nice about telling Jack, that it was costly and impossible to keep up the search, that they were getting nowhere, and, though they didn't say it, doubting his sanity, the truth of his words. If they knew where to look and nothing was there, then maybe Jack was just crazy, too much time alone in the sun, and he knew they were thinking that, but he wouldn't believe. There was a scar on his back where Kate had sewed him up, shaken though she was, a stranger, and she'd still helped. He wouldn't allow himself to believe they might be right.

He talked to Marc.

He stayed inside.

He did not watch the Red Sox.

He took showers. Long, steaming hot, pressure always strong, and thought about Kate, how she loved them. Thought about Sawyer and how he loved the water, always skinny-dipping on the beach or hiking up to the waterfall, but never seemed to use the hatch facilities, beyond the library. Never seemed to spend any time there at all, if he could help it.

He wondered if Sun was all right, if Kate would play midwife again.

If Aaron was growing.

The water washed the tears off his cheeks before they could really materialize.

*

_There_  
It was a gorgeous night, not that there were many that weren't on the island, and Kate was still watching the horizon, black against starry black. She didn't move from there a great deal, and though Sawyer knew she had too strong a self-preservation instinct to starve or just fade away, he was worried.

He traded a few things from his stash — the hidden one, still waiting for him on his return — for an evening with Sayid's walkie talkie, and though it took him too long, and a great deal of swearing, he finally got what he was looking for, what Creme Puff had told him about. High bouncing radio waves, and music that sounded like it was floating across times.

Patsy Cline, singing about sunsets on tropic isles and rain-wet jungles. He, carefully keeping it angled to try and hold onto the signal, walked over to Freckles, and sat down next to her. She didn't move, until he got a look at her mouth, murmuring along with the song—

_just remember till you're home again, you belong to me_

When good old Patsy got to the bit about flying the ocean in a silver plane, Kate leaned into Sawyer, about to say something, and the music faded out briefly, and he swore he heard a man's voice. He and Kate just stared, another in and out fade.

_Don't know why we're still looking—_ Kate and Sawyer's eyes locked, Sawyer too terrified to move, and Kate ran for Sayid.

*

_Here_  
Marc was staying with Jack, again. It had leaked, somehow, that there was a survivor of Oceanic 815, and to pile hurt upon hurt, the search efforts were being cut, tapering, and though no one would really admit it, over.

The phone rang and Jack didn't even blink, didn't want to hear, again, that there was no news, that there was no hope, that they couldn't afford to care any more. Marc looked at him expectantly and finally answered the phone himself, face going whiter and whiter. Jack, staring into space, didn't look or notice, and Marc forced the phone into Jack's hand.

"They found them."

***


End file.
